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Karaoke in America, by the numbers
These are the 3,096 karaoke venues KaraokeList has confirmed across all 50 states and DC, not every karaoke bar in America. Here is where they are, what kind of rooms they have, and what their listings say about when to go.
Per resident, Hawaii leads
Counted raw, the biggest states lead, as you would expect: California (543), Texas (294) and Florida (203). Per resident the order changes. Across the country there are 0.93 confirmed venues per 100,000 people (2020 Census). Hawaii has 2.54, 2.7 times the national rate, and Oregon is next at 1.96.
The top ten is Hawaii, Oregon, District of Columbia, Washington, Nevada, California, Alaska, Rhode Island, Colorado and Tennessee: mostly Western. California, with more venues than any other state, ranks 6th per resident; New York, whose venues crowd into the city, ranks 38th. By Census region the West leads with 1.35 venues per 100,000 people and the Northeast trails with 0.66.
At the bottom are Delaware, New Mexico, Vermont, Maine, New Jersey, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia, with Delaware last at 0.4. That is where we would look first for venues we have missed. 16 places, DC among them, have fewer than 20 confirmed venues, so their ranks can move on a handful of bars.
| Rank | State | Venues | Per 100k residents |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hawaii | 37 | 2.54 |
| 2 | Oregon | 83 | 1.96 |
| 3 | District of Columbia | 13 | 1.89 |
| 4 | Washington | 130 | 1.69 |
| 5 | Nevada | 52 | 1.67 |
| 6 | California | 543 | 1.37 |
| 7 | Alaska | 10 | 1.36 |
| 8 | Rhode Island | 14 | 1.28 |
| 9 | Colorado | 69 | 1.20 |
| 10 | Tennessee | 79 | 1.14 |
Confidence: indicative. A ranking like this assumes our coverage is about as good in one state as the next, and it is not quite. The share of candidate places that ended up confirmed ran from 12% in New Jersey to 37% in Oregon; some of that gap is real closures, some is what we could find. Hawaii leads whether or not the 2,069 unconfirmed places are counted, but the size of its lead depends on it, and a gap of a few places mid-table means nothing.
Most karaoke happens in the bar's own room
Of the 3,018 confirmed venues whose format we could establish, 85% run karaoke in a public room: a bar or restaurant where everyone hears everyone. 11% offer only private rooms, rented by a group and usually by the hour, the format known as noraebang in Korean and KTV in Chinese. The other 4% do both.
Private rooms are not spread evenly. By Census region they are commonest in the Northeast, where 25% of venues offer them, and the West (19%), and rarest in the Midwest (8%). Among states with at least 20 confirmed venues, Hawaii (56%), New York (48%) and Nevada (31%) lead. In Arkansas, Minnesota and Ohio, 3% or fewer of confirmed venues have them.
Up close, they cluster. All 15 confirmed venues in Flushing, Queens, have private rooms, as do all 6 in Palisades Park, New Jersey, and 9 of 12 in Westminster and Garden Grove, the heart of Orange County's Little Saigon. Around Honolulu the share is 64%. The private room is the standard format across much of East and Southeast Asia, and these are places known for their Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese American communities.
| Census region | Venues | Public room only (%) | Private rooms only (%) | Both (%) | Any private rooms (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northeast | 383 | 75 | 19 | 6 | 25 |
| Midwest | 557 | 92 | 5 | 3 | 8 |
| South | 1,095 | 88 | 8 | 4 | 12 |
| West | 1,061 | 81 | 15 | 4 | 19 |
Confidence: solid, as a description of these 3,096 venues: the shares do not depend on how many venues we found. One caution about what they say of America as a whole: when we compared San Diego with an independent directory, our list included private-room venues the other had skipped entirely, so different sources count formats differently. The labels are not perfect either: a read-through of every confirmed record in 50 smaller metros found at least 11 typed as offering private rooms whose evidence describes only a bar night, so if anything these private-room shares run slightly high.
The densest places to sing
Grouped into metro areas (venues within 25 miles of a metro's principal cities), Los Angeles leads with 193 confirmed venues, then New York (124) and Seattle (87). Portland, Oregon, is 9th with 54, ahead of Boston (27). Atlanta stands out on format: 39% of its venues have private rooms, the highest share of any Southern metro with at least 20 confirmed venues.
Zoom in and the densest patch in the country is a box roughly 6.9 by 5.2 miles over most of Manhattan below Harlem and the facing shore of Brooklyn and Queens: 45 confirmed venues.
Zoom in again and it is one block. West 32nd Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway, the stretch of Manhattan's Koreatown also signed as Korea Way, has confirmed karaoke venues at 10 different street numbers, from No. 2 to No. 38. Every one of them offers private rooms, and 9 of the 10 addresses name an upper floor, so you would walk past most of them without knowing. No other street in the dataset has more than 5.
| Metro area | Venues | With private rooms (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles | 193 | 33 |
| New York | 124 | 57 |
| Seattle | 87 | 15 |
| Chicago | 74 | 24 |
| San Francisco–Oakland | 72 | 30 |
| Houston | 69 | 22 |
| Dallas–Fort Worth | 62 | 22 |
| San Diego | 57 | 10 |
| Portland, OR | 54 | 6 |
| Phoenix | 53 | 8 |
| Miami–Fort Lauderdale | 48 | 14 |
| Tampa–St. Petersburg | 45 | 9 |
| Atlanta | 44 | 39 |
| Detroit | 44 | 5 |
| Virginia Beach–Norfolk | 44 | 7 |
Confidence: indicative for the metro ranking, which inherits the coverage caveat above; our metro areas are circles around principal cities, not official boundaries, and the list is in the analysis script. The West 32nd Street count is exact for our records, and a floor for the block.
Which night? The listings lean Friday
Every confirmed venue lists at least one night. Across them, 60% list Friday and 57% list Saturday, with Thursday a clear third at 49%. Monday is the quietest, listed by 24%, so in these listings the busiest night has 2.5 times as many venues as the quietest.
The 1,138 venues that list a single night a week pick Friday most often (25%), then Thursday (21%), ahead of Saturday (18%). Our reading, and it is only that: Saturday fills itself, and karaoke is how a bar fills a Thursday.
State by state, among the 35 states with at least 20 venues listing nights, Friday or Saturday tops the listings in 32. Saturday alone leads the listings in 12: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, Washington and Wisconsin. The exceptions are Hawaii, New Jersey and Virginia, where Thursday matches or edges the weekend in the listings by 3 venues or fewer. In New Jersey, 26 of 50 venues list Thursday against 23 for Saturday.
| Night | Venues listing it | All confirmed venues (%) | Bars listing 1–6 nights (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 730 | 24 | 8 |
| Tuesday | 937 | 30 | 16 |
| Wednesday | 1,240 | 40 | 27 |
| Thursday | 1,518 | 49 | 37 |
| Friday | 1,844 | 60 | 49 |
| Saturday | 1,772 | 57 | 46 |
| Sunday | 996 | 32 | 18 |
Confidence: weak. This is what listings say, and listings drift: nights change, hosts move on, a page can be a season out of date. When we compared San Diego with an independently built directory, where both had nights for a venue they agreed 12 times out of 23. Treat the national shape as a fair guess and any single venue's night as something to confirm before you go.
Most bars list a night or two; private rooms list all seven
37% of confirmed venues list a single night a week and 22% list two. The typical public-room venue lists 2 nights a week. Only 9% of public-room venues list all seven nights, against 53% of venues that offer only private rooms, whose listed nights are usually just their opening days: renting rooms is the whole business.
In raw numbers, the most seven-night venues are listed in California (115), New York (47) and Texas (37). As a share of each state's listings, Hawaii (49%), Nevada (37%) and New York (37%) lead: the same three states where private rooms are commonest.
Monthly karaoke barely registers in the listings: 20 confirmed venues describe theirs as monthly.
Confidence: weak, for the same reason as the nights above. A venue that runs karaoke every week but whose listing names only its biggest night is counted here as a one-night venue.
How late? In New York's listings, often 4am
Times are the thinnest data here: 60% of confirmed venues list a start time and 38% an end time. With that said, public-room karaoke is typically listed to start at 9pm, both the median and the most common time, and 77% of listed starts fall between 8pm and 10pm. The median listed end is 1am, and 44% list a later one. Venues that offer only private rooms keep longer hours: 78% of those listing an end go past 1am.
Then there is New York. Of the 77 New York venues that list an end time, 36 say 4am, nearly half, and 33 of those 36 offer private rooms. 64% of New York's listed end times are later than 2am; across the rest of the country the figure is 6%, and Nevada is next among states at 43%. New York's bar hours run to 4am, later than most states allow, and its karaoke rooms appear to use them.
| Metro area | Venues listing an end time | Listed as ending after 2am (%) | Median listed end |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | 73 | 70 | 4am |
| Las Vegas | 19 | 47 | 2am |
| Washington, DC | 21 | 24 | 1:30am |
| Tampa–St. Petersburg | 13 | 23 | 12:30am |
| Austin | 10 | 20 | 2am |
| Atlanta | 27 | 19 | 2am |
| Chicago | 20 | 15 | 1am |
| Miami–Fort Lauderdale | 24 | 12 | midnight |
Confidence: weak, and thinner than the nights. Our records hold one start and one end time per venue; where a venue's nights start at different hours we cleared the times rather than guess, so late-running venues with several nights may be under-counted. A read-through of 50 smaller metros also found records where one night's time had been copied onto every night, and a few where opening hours stood in for karaoke hours.
Every state, ranked
Find your state. Counts are confirmed venues as of September 5, 2026; per-resident figures use 2020 Census population. 7 places have fewer than 10 confirmed venues, and at that end of the table one or two bars move a rank a long way.
If your state looks thin, it probably is. A venue you sing at that we have missed can be added from the Places tab in the KaraokeList app.
| State | Venues | Rank by count | Per 100k residents | Rank per resident |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 45 | 22 | 0.90 | 24 |
| Alaska | 10 | 42 | 1.36 | 7 |
| Arizona | 74 | 14 | 1.03 | 15 |
| Arkansas | 29 | 30 | 0.96 | 20 |
| California | 543 | 1 | 1.37 | 6 |
| Colorado | 69 | 15 | 1.20 | 9 |
| Connecticut | 26 | 33 | 0.72 | 33 |
| Delaware | 4 | 50 | 0.40 | 51 |
| District of Columbia | 13 | 40 | 1.89 | 3 |
| Florida | 203 | 3 | 0.94 | 22 |
| Georgia | 79 | 12 | 0.74 | 31 |
| Hawaii | 37 | 26 | 2.54 | 1 |
| Idaho | 21 | 34 | 1.14 | 11 |
| Illinois | 99 | 6 | 0.77 | 29 |
| Indiana | 48 | 20 | 0.71 | 34 |
| Iowa | 32 | 29 | 1.00 | 19 |
| Kansas | 16 | 38 | 0.54 | 46 |
| Kentucky | 29 | 30 | 0.64 | 36 |
| Louisiana | 44 | 23 | 0.94 | 21 |
| Maine | 7 | 47 | 0.51 | 48 |
| Maryland | 36 | 27 | 0.58 | 40 |
| Massachusetts | 46 | 21 | 0.65 | 35 |
| Michigan | 86 | 10 | 0.85 | 27 |
| Minnesota | 35 | 28 | 0.61 | 39 |
| Mississippi | 17 | 37 | 0.57 | 41 |
| Missouri | 65 | 16 | 1.06 | 13 |
| Montana | 10 | 42 | 0.92 | 23 |
| Nebraska | 21 | 34 | 1.07 | 12 |
| Nevada | 52 | 18 | 1.67 | 5 |
| New Hampshire | 12 | 41 | 0.87 | 25 |
| New Jersey | 50 | 19 | 0.54 | 47 |
| New Mexico | 9 | 45 | 0.43 | 50 |
| New York | 128 | 5 | 0.63 | 38 |
| North Carolina | 57 | 17 | 0.55 | 45 |
| North Dakota | 5 | 48 | 0.64 | 37 |
| Ohio | 98 | 7 | 0.83 | 28 |
| Oklahoma | 41 | 25 | 1.04 | 14 |
| Oregon | 83 | 11 | 1.96 | 2 |
| Pennsylvania | 97 | 8 | 0.75 | 30 |
| Rhode Island | 14 | 39 | 1.28 | 8 |
| South Carolina | 28 | 32 | 0.55 | 44 |
| South Dakota | 9 | 45 | 1.02 | 16 |
| Tennessee | 79 | 12 | 1.14 | 10 |
| Texas | 294 | 2 | 1.01 | 17 |
| Utah | 18 | 36 | 0.55 | 43 |
| Vermont | 3 | 51 | 0.47 | 49 |
| Virginia | 87 | 9 | 1.01 | 18 |
| Washington | 130 | 4 | 1.69 | 4 |
| West Virginia | 10 | 42 | 0.56 | 42 |
| Wisconsin | 43 | 24 | 0.73 | 32 |
| Wyoming | 5 | 48 | 0.87 | 26 |
Confidence: indicative. The coverage caveat under the first table applies to every row.
Questions
Is this every karaoke bar in America?
No. It is the 3,096 venues KaraokeList has confirmed, which is a subset of what exists. In San Diego, the one metro we measured, our full directory, confirmed and unconfirmed, had 75 venues, an independently built directory had 75, and only 28 were on both. Neither list was complete. Treat every count here as a floor.
How was a venue confirmed?
We started from 13,651 candidate places drawn from open map data, Apple Maps and web searches. Each went through automated web research: find a source that ties the place to karaoke, check that it is open and open to the public, and record nights only where a source names them. Every run was audited by a second automated pass, and flagged rows were checked by hand. A later audit found that for 248 confirmed venues, about 8%, the saved evidence is an hours listing or similar rather than a line that mentions karaoke; they are still counted here.
What do solid, indicative and weak mean?
Solid: a property of the venues we have, which would not change if we found more, such as the split between bars and private rooms. Indicative: depends on our coverage being about as good everywhere, which it roughly but not exactly is; state and metro rankings sit here. Weak: depends on listed nights and times, which matched an independent directory about half the time.
Why does my state rank low?
Most likely because we have confirmed fewer of its venues, not because it sings less. The share of candidate places that ended up confirmed ranged from 12% to 37% between states, and a venue only counts as confirmed if its nights are published somewhere we could find.
What is the difference between a public room and a private room?
A public room is a bar or restaurant running karaoke for everyone in the room, usually with a host taking requests. A private room is rented by a group, usually by the hour, with its own screen and song list; it is called noraebang in Korean and KTV in Chinese. Some venues have both.
Can I use these numbers?
Yes. Please credit KaraokeList, link to this page, and note that the venues were checked from August 13 to September 5, 2026.
A venue is missing or wrong. How do I fix it?
Add or correct it from the Places tab in the KaraokeList app. Browsing the map needs no account; adding or reporting a venue needs a free one.
Found your state?
Now find your night.
The venues behind these numbers are on the map in KaraokeList, and browsing it needs no account. Once you’re there, the app keeps every song you can actually pull off — and when the list runs dry, it finds you new ones, each with a reason.
